the odyssey of govWorks.com's co-founders
Tom Herman and Kaleil Isaza Tuzman in their meteoric rise to a
$50M company with over 200 employees (with no real product) in
1999, to its failure and dissolution due to company excesses and
ego

the contrast between their friendship and the painful
scenes in which Kaleil bars Tom from entering the building

the comical sequence in which Steamboat Bill Jr.
(Buster Keaton) tries on hats and his personality changes into
a new character with each one

the tremendous special effects of a destructive tornado/cyclone

the spectacular, beautifully-choreographed, extremely
dangerous stunt of the front of a two-story house falling forward
- its second floor window opening is perfectly positioned to fall
over bewildered young Bill standing in front of the building

the graveyard scene around the casket in which grieving,
strong-willed and feisty mother M'Lynn Eatenton (Sally Field) reacts
to her daughter's death - raging and despairing angrily: ("I'm
fine! I can jog all the way to Texas and back, but my daughter can't!
She never could! Oh God! I'm so mad, I don't know what to do! I wanna
know why! I wanna know WHY Shelby's life is over! I wanna know how
that baby will ever know how wonderful his mother was. Will he EVER
know what she went through for him? Oh, God, I wanna know whyyyy!
Whhhyyyyy?! Lord, I wish I could understand. No! No! No! It's not
supposed to happen this way. I'm supposed to go first. I've always
been ready to go first. I don't think I can take this. I don't think
I can take this. I just wanna hit somebody til they feel as bad as
I do! I JUST WANNA HIT SOMETHING! I WANNA HIT IT HARD!")

the touching, famous sequence of Stella (Barbara
Stanwyck) and her daughter Laurel (or "Lollie") (Anne
Shirley) waiting at her unattended birthday party - removing plates
as regrets are received until they are the only ones

the train berth scene in which her caring teenaged
daughter comes down to "cuddle" with her mother who has
overheard criticisms (about being "a common looking creature
for a mother")

a gauche Stella's self-sacrificing renunciation scene
with Helen Morrison (Barbara O'Neil) in which she suggests giving
up her daughter for a better life

the scene of Stella deliberately staging a vulgar
appearance for her daughter in her showy, coarse and common style
(reading a "LOVE" book, listening to loud music and smoking
a cigarette)

the unforgettable final wedding scene and Stella's
reactions as she is standing alone in the rain at the outer gate
gazing lovingly and adoringly - with tears in her eyes (and biting
a handkerchief in her mouth) - through the mansion's window at her
daughter's high-society wedding

the ending in which the gathering crowd is told by
a policeman to move along - and afterwards, Stella's joyful stride
down the street as the film fades to black

the scene of new Stepford, Connecticut suburban
wives Joanna Eberhart and Bobbie Markowe (Katharine Ross and Paula
Prentiss) noting suspiciously that their seemingly-perfect neighbor
housewives only clean house and bow to their husband's needs

the garden party among the housewives and malfunctioning
Carol's (Nanette Newman) quote: "I'll just die if I don't get
this recipe!"

the scene of the failed consciousness-raising session/discussion
as the wives extol the virtues of Easy-On spray starch

Bobbie acting robotically in the kitchen while serving
coffee to Joanna - being stabbed to test her humanity ("Do you
bleed?") - and going berserk due to severed wiring (twirling
and repeating monotonously:
"I was just going to give you coffee? How could you do a thing
like that? I thought we were friends!")

the startling scene in which Joanna comes face to
face with her semi-complete, sunken dark-eyed robotic double

the image of the last haunting scene - all of the
flowery-dress-wearing wives pushing their shopping carts in the supermarket

The Sting (1973)

In this Depression-Era, Best Picture-winning crime/comedy
from director George Roy Hill:

the tricky "sting" heist that they orchestrate
on racketeer mob boss Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw) in the film's
conclusion

the last lines of dialogue: (Henry: "You not
gonna stick around for your share?" Hooker: "Nah. I'd only
blow it")

The Straight Story (1999)

In director David Lynch's atypical drama:

the low-key reunion scene between 73 year-old Iowan
widower Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) - after a long 6-week
ride across Iowa and into neighboring Wisconsin on his lawn mower/tractor
- and his sick brother Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton) on the front porch

Strange Days (1995)

In director Kathryn Bigelow's dystopic tech-noir:

the opening exciting action sequence of an illicit
'playback clip' (a "snuff" clip called a 'blackjack')
of a failed robbery attempt of a Chinese restaurant by masked criminals,
with one of the robbers falling six stories from the side of a
building and smashing into the sidewalk ("It gets you pumpin'...one
man's mundane and desperate existence is another man's Technicolor")

it was recorded (or "wired") directly from
a head device called a 'squid' (short for Superconducting Quantum
Interference Device) connecting into the cerebral cortex ("It's
pure and uncut, straight from the cerebral cortex")

the scene of late-1999 sleazy ex-vice squad cop and
peddler of illegal software clips Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) ecstatically
'jacking in' to playback a clip of sexy ex-girlfriend Faith Justin
(Juliette Lewis) filmed from a first-person perspective, as they
roller-skated together in Venice, CA - and then in her apartment
where she stripped and they had sex together (to the tune of Bob
Marley's "Three Little Birds")

aspiring singer Faith's harsh rejection of pining
Nero at her club ("You know one of the ways that movies are
still better than playback? 'Cause the music comes up, there's credits,
and you always know when it's over. IT'S OVER!")

another contraband snuff clip, watched to Nero's
horror, in which the murderer forces the female prostitute/victim
Iris (Brigitte Bako) to be 'jacked in' in order to experience her
own brutal rape, strangulation and death

the scene of Lenny's exciting escape from two corrupt "loose-cannon" cops
when his street-savvy friend - limousine chauffeur-security bodyguard
Lornette "Macey" Mason (Angela Bassett), drives their gasoline-soaked
burning limousine through a fence and off a pier into the harbor
waters (and they make an underwater escape through the trunk)

the scene of the brutal assassination of outspoken
militant black rapper Jeriko One (Glen Plummer) shot execution-style
by two corrupt, rogue LA cops Steckler and Engelman (Vincent D'Onofrio
and William Fichtner) during a random traffic stop

the climactic arrival of the millennium's New Year's
Eve high atop the downtown Bonaventura Hotel punctuated by Lenny's
fight to-the-death against long-haired, menacing ex-cop turned PI
Max Peltier (Tom Sizemore), Iris' killer, before Max falls to his
death

the arrest and death of both cops on the street after
the riotous crowd comes to heroic Mace's rescue

the concluding clinch between Lenny and Mace as the
New Year of 2000 begins

Strangers On a Train (1951)

In Alfred Hitchcock's thriller:

the opening sequence introducing the duality of
the two 'strangers on a train' with their distinctive shoes and
a plan to "swap murders" - the two characters:
- the villainous psychotic 'stranger' character Bruno Anthony (Robert
Walker)
- tennis ace Guy Haines (Farley Granger)

the many strikingly visual and auditory scenes, including
the foreshadowing scream in the river-cave just before the scene
of Bruno's murder of Guy's stifling wife Miriam (Laura Elliot) -
a strangulation murder scene reflected in her thick-lensed glasses
that have fallen to the grass on "Magic Isle" while in
the distant background the amusement park's merry-go-round ironically
plays "Strawberry Blonde"

the midnight meeting scene at an ironwork fence when
a police car arrives

the scene of Bruno's demands that Guy kill his father

the famous tennis match scene of Bruno watching tennis
star Guy straight ahead of him as all the others watch the game

the society cocktail party scene in which Bruno jokingly
demonstrated how he could simply murder someone by strangulation
and actually choked one of the guests (Norma Varden)

the cross-cutting between the scene of spectators
watching a close tennis match and the scene of Bruno's retrieval
of a cigarette lighter (to be used as planted evidence against Guy)
accidentally dropped down a sewer grating

the wrestling scene aboard a revolving out-of-control
merry-go-round in the finale after the merry-go-round operator was
shot and fell on the controls

Straw Dogs (1971)

In Sam Peckinpah's disturbing and provocative contemporary
'western' film that further ignited controversy over screen violence
and sexual abuse of women in the early 70s (i.e., did she willingly
encourage the first rape?):

an unflinching and violent film that was poster-advertised
with the image of broken glasses belonging to David Sumner (Dustin
Hoffman), a bookish, mild-mannered, pacifistic/aggressive American
mathematician on sabbatical and living in a rural England town
with his teasingly-seductive young British newlywed bride Amy (Susan
George)

Amy allowing local laborers to ogle her half-naked
through the window

the scene of local thugs (one of whom was an ex-boyfriend)
assaulting Sumner's wife in a graphic double rape scene (while Sumner
was sent away on a hunting expedition in the woods)

his cathartic eruption and escalation of bloody violence
(scalding, clubbing, shotgun blasts, etc.) to protect his wife and
home ("This is where I live. This is me. I will not allow violence
against this house")

the sexy and electrifying image of an animalistic,
muscle-bound, beefy and inarticulate Stanley Kowalski (Oscar-nominated
Marlon Brando) in a torn, sweaty T-shirt, on the street, bellowing
and screaming up to his wife: "Hey Stell lahhhh..."

pregnant Stella's (Oscar-winning Kim Hunter) descent
on the stairs when Stanley begs for forgiveness from her and they
share a close embrace - with his ear against her swollen body to
hear their unborn child's heartbeat

Catherine's climactic monologue and surreal murder
scene in which she describes (with impressionistic flashbacks) the
horrifying incident (cannibalistic homicide by Mexican youths) from
the past summer that happened to her homosexual cousin Sebastian
(unseen fully in the film) - he had used her beauty as a ploy to
lure Italian beach boys closer to him for his own pleasure